Fabienne AUTIER

It has been argued that bureaucratic management systems were definitely non effective if organizations were to innovate. As an alternative it has been argued that only non-bureaucratic type of management systems i.e “organic” or “adhocratic” management systems were conducive to innovation. In this article, a case study of a highly innovative firm suggests that the alternative is not as straightforward as it may seem. The study investigates a conceptual and practical asymmetry between the two ideal-types. The study’s findings identify a major blind spot of the supposedly non-bureaucratic management systems : namely, regulation. This leads us to argue that Adhocratic management systems are not a self-standing alternative to Bureaucratic management systems, but rather a variation of the latter. Such a variation tends to generate a “paradoxical management system”.